Chelx Bang Bang
by Frazi
Summary: She comes there every year.


**Bang! Bang!**  
_4/14/2006 2:40 PM  
Chlex Ship  
Summary: She comes there every year._

The cigarette trembled between thin fingers. Lips opened and nipped the bud taking a deep drag. With a hissing sound, the smoke was held inside, letting it soak into the veins before it was let out with a content, slow breath.

Liquid green eyes drifted away from the horizon to look at the embers burning at the end of the half smoked cigarette. Mouth drifted up at the corner and artfully the cigarette was flicked away. Watching it fall the fourteen stories below, the sad little smile faded and the sudden inclination to jump after it was overwhelming.

"Please come away from the ledge."

A shuttered breath was release before the head turned. A mask sliding over the face, unmoving, constant and without feeling. "It's okay Harrison. I'm not jumping."

The dark haired man stepped into the balcony and watched his fiancée sitting cross-legged on the eight inch thick brick ledge. Every year, she'd sit there on the 14th of April and stare down into the streets of Metropolis, the light trails nearly dizzying and wish she could fly. "You could fall Chloe." He resisted the urge to touch her even if everything inside him screamed to draw her away. But he didn't trust her to hold on long enough for him to catch her, so he kept his distance.

The blond haired woman let out a suffering breath and unfolded to her full height, her feet finding purchase on the narrow ledge with the ease of a gymnast. And it still took Harrison's breath away. She didn't falter, but his heart had already fallen down with her cigarette. "Chloe…"

Stretching out her arms, she stood there looking towards the darkening horizon. "Why do you want to marry me Harrison?"

"Please Chloe you need to…"

"I don't love you."

The man winced visibly, visions of pushing her off abundant in his mind before he remembered that she'd never promised him love. "Someone needs to love you."

She looked down at her bare feet, her white off-the-shoulders dress fluttering around her knees as the winds wrapped around her, wanting to take her with them. "Yes. I need to be loved." Looking over her shoulder, she met the scaredgray eyes. "But you know I'll die young."

"Damnmit Chloe, don't say that."

"Why not?"

Gritting his teeth, he couldn't help curse the man who'd brought her here. Here to this point in her life where she made little sense, craved death and lived like she had forever. He cursed the man who took away the human inside her and left this shell of beauty and brains behind that would never succumb to him. Would never be his. "I need you."

The bitter laugh echoed over the sound of sirens as she took a step and Harrison lost his breath as she started to tread across the length of the balconyledge. "And here I thought you were the most benevolent man on earth." She shook her head and swayed for a moment, nearly making the man cry out. Grinning wickedly, almost like she knew she wouldn't fall, Chloe turned, sticking one toe out as she mapped her way back. "Do you know the bloodiest movie ever made?"

The man let out a tolerant sigh, leaning back against the wall as she performed the trapeze back and forth. "No."

"I'll give you a hint." She sang back, her short blond hair whipping around her neck where it was cropped haphazardly. "Bang! Bang!"

"Kill Bill."

"I knew dating a lawyer would have its perks," she chuckled sardonically and stopped, hands on her hips, her back to the death drop behind her.

"You're not dating me Chloe. You're marrying me."

She shook her head, a hint of her crazy playfulness shinning through. "Can't marry you if I'm dead."

"For god's sake! You're not dying!"

His outburst echoed through the night and her eyes instantly saddened. The lively glimmer faded into black and she stood there, her shoulders suddenly sagging. "Then why am I alone?"

"You're not alone."

"He's not here." Arms wrapped around herself, Chloe Sullivan looked out to the cityscape. "Bang, bang. He shot me down." She sang as she started walking again. "Bang, bang. I hit the ground. Bang, bang. That awful sound. Bang, bang."

"Chloe…"

She smirked heinously. "Lex Luthor shot me down." Spinning precariously on her toe, the woman held up her hands towards the sky as if wishing it would swoop down and fly her away. "And that's why I'll die young."

She couldn't. Four years since her divorce to the tycoon and she was still singing for him. Harrison had been used to the pinch of sharing her with the memory of another man, but he didn't know if he was willing to share her death with him. Harrison didn't deserve to watch her final descent. And it was clear as day that today, she wasn't coming down. She had decided. And he had known. "I thought you were stronger."

"They all do." The snap was bitter and aching. Chloe watched the kaleidoscope of memories as the lights slowly started to glimmer, the sun disappearing. "Strong like stone." She sighed and tilted her head, the song running through her mind like a mantra. "Seasons came and changed the time, when I grew up I called him mine. He would always laugh and say, remember when we used to play. Bang, bang."

She took another twirl and started walking back towards the other edge of the balcony. Now singing louder, with the breath coming from deep in her belly, she looked up at the studded sky. "Music played and people sang, just for me the church bells rang. Now he's gone, I don't know why. And till this day, sometimes I cry. He didn't even say goodbye, he didn't take the time to lie." A solitary tear slid down one perfect porcelain cheek. "Bang, bang. My baby shot me down." Her eyes slid shut and her breath left her.

"I hate it when you call me that."

The sound of his voice was like a gunshot. Spinning around, green eyes wide, her mouth parted she had just the time to see the moonlight reflecting off his bald head, hands shoved into the black pants. And then she was falling.

In the fraction of a second that she was weightless, head tipped back, arms out to embrace the void, the arm had shot forward wrapped around her waist and she was falling forwards. Into the arms of death and the only man who dared to save her from it.

Two hearts screamed against each other, each in its own body, teetering on the edge of seizing, yet in unison. Breaths harsh and equally scared.

And Chloe realized he'd fallen with her.

"Harrison?"

Lex Luthor held her tighter in the confines of his embrace. He'd contented himself with knowing she was alive without him. Away, but alive. And for that instant that he'd seen her fall, Alexander Joseph Luthor had aged a millennium. "Called me before he came up here. Said you were singing tonight. How could I missthe performance?"

Trembling against his solid frame, she didn't dare lift her head. The significance of his appearance nearly breath stealing. She didn't dare speculate. "I've sung before."

He resisted the urge to shake her. "Never in a finale."

Her head tipped back and flashing green eyes glared up into his face. "Damn you Luthor. My life is not yours for the saving!"

His lips twisted into an ironic line. "You forget Ms. Sullivan. I own this town."

She twisted in his grasp, but he held tight. "Newsflash! You don't own me!"

When she continued to struggle, Lex's own smirk melted into a glare and he held her firmly by her upper arms and shook her slightly. "Damn you! Sullivan. Stop!"

"NO!"

He let out an exasperated breath and twisted her arms behind her back, holding her fragile wrists firmly in his hand and her grabbed her defiant little chin with his other. She sure as hell didn't seem like the broken angel Harrison had sent him to save, but then he always did bring out the best in her.

Furious green eyes refused to be intimidated by him, but she did cease the struggle. More for the reason that the brush of his body against hers was achingly familiar and she needed to stay angry. She had to before she begged him for her life. So she could live longer.

Trying to even his breath, Lex looked down into her face, his eyes skimming over her before he swallowed. No one. No woman or man could ever make him wish he was someone else. No one but this sprite who always manage to thwart his plans. Just like she had now. "I hope you're proud."

Her chin stayed stubbornly up, her lips pressed together, determined.

Snarling softly, he tightened his grip on her. "I know this is what you wanted."

"What!?" She snorted, for a moment transported back in time. To a time when she was seventeen, fresh in metropolis, defiant and individualistic. An entity separate from the Luthors.

"THIS!" The man thundered, the reverberations of his voice nearly snaking through her bones. It was rare, he lost his temper and Chloe could tell he had lost it. After four years alone. He'd lost it. "The deal was simple Ms. Sullivan. You were to live!"

Her lips quirked in a winsome smile. "Still breathing peanut head."

His cerulean blue eyes narrowed. "You sing on ledges often?"

"Bang, bang." She nearly cried out as her back hit ledge, the edge stabbing into her tailbone as he tipped her back. Opening her eyes up into his enraged face, she saw the unfathomable depths of his eyes flicker with memories, his nostrils flaring with her scent and she smiled up at him knowingly. "You're the one who said I'd die young."

"With me!" He hissed softly. "If you were to remain with me you would die young."

"When will you learn Luthor?" Now that her hands were free, she indulged in the need to touch him. Slender fingers slid across his temple, his eyes shuttering close as she smiled at him. A sad little smile. Sad for him. "You don't say who lives and dies."

Sea blue eyes snapped open to meet her gaze. "If you'd…"

"Jumped?"

"Fallen! Living away from me for four goddamn years would have been for nothing!"

The woman burst out laughing, a loud belly aching laugh she hadn't laughed since she was seventeen, arms wrapping around his neck, her breath mingling with him. For a moment, the man stared at her wide mouth, the peals of laughter intoxicating as he pressed into her, the soft supple curves of her older and wiser. Wicked. Tantalizing. "Chloe, it would do well for you to remember I don't like being laughed at."

Cupping his jaw she gave him a liquid grin. "You bald silly little man." Choking on her ebbing laughter she held his eyes. "Who says I was living?" She saw his Adam's apple bob, the only indication to the emotions flooding over him. "I'm only alive when you're inside me."

"Christ." The muffled curse/prayer left him in a sharp breath as he buried his face into her neck, pulling her away from the ledge and into his arms. Holding her against him, letting her fit the hard lines of his body in a way only she could, his hands rushing over, noting the changes and the familiarity of her. Marking her to memory. Remembering. Reassuring himself. Speaking words of madness and love into the fragrance of her hair, his lips trembling against her.

Hands sliding up under the back of his black coat, Chloe Luthor Sullivan tilted her head back to see the blackness of the sky speckled with crystalline constellations as the man wrapped himself around her like promises.

"Bang, bang."

"Ms. Sullivan?"

"I made a choice cue-ball. I could spend my life waiting to die or I could spend it living. With you."

His hand snaked around her nape and lifted her eyes to his as he held her there. "You should have jumped."

Eyes trained on his, she breathed against his trembling mouth. "Who says I didn't?" Eyes trained on his, she breathed against his trembling mouth. "Who says I didn't?"

_Bang __Bang  
__My baby shot me down.  
__** Song by Nancy Sinatra**_

THE END


End file.
